Miss Italy draws ridicule after telling contest judges she wants to experience WWII

New Miss Italy makes a gaffe she’s paying for dearly on social media after answering “1942” when asked live on TV by judges what historical period she would like to live in.

When the new Miss Italia was asked on her way to winning the glitzy televised contest what historical period she would like to have lived in, her answer caught most Italians by surprise.

Eighteen-year-old Alice Sabatini prompted incredulity online after telling the pageant judges that her epoch of choice was 1942, one of the darkest years of World War II and the Mussolini dictatorship.

Asked why she had chosen that year, the contestant from Lazio said she wanted to "live" the Second World War, noting that she would not have had to fight since she is a woman.

"Well ... to see really what the Second World War was like, since the books talk about it for page after page. I want to live it. In any case, I am a woman so I wouldn't have had to do military service, so I would have been at home with the fear of ..." she said, trailing off with a light laugh.

Her chosen year was the one during which Anne Frank began writing her diary, and the Nazis began gassing tens of thousands of Jews at Auschwitz and other camps.

Germany, Italy's ally at the time, invaded Vichy France. Hundreds of Italians died in the North African campaign, including the long retreat from the Battle of El Alamein.

More than 20,000 Italians also died in the Battle of Stalingrad that year, many during the bloody defeat of the Italian 8th Army near the Don River.

Sabatini's desire to relive one of Europe's bloodiest years triggered a barrage of satire online. Twitter montages featured her smiling as she sashayed in her bikini through battlefields.

An Italian satirist known as "the Jackal" produced a spoof video that quickly went viral.

But Sabatini's response did not seem to damage her standing in the pageant, which she won based on both judges' scores and viewer call-in votes.

The jokes prompted one pageant judge, Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender actress and politician, to call for understanding.

"Try to imagine the emotions of a young woman who had all the spotlight on her: she panicked," Luxuria said.

Sabatini defended her comments yesterday, saying she was caught off guard as the first contestant to be asked the question, but had meant to express admiration for her great grandmother, who is still alive and always recalls World War II.

"I would have liked to live through what she had gone through in those years," Sabatini was reported as saying in an interview published in Urban Post.

"For better and for worse."  Daily Telegraph UK By Andrea Vogt